GERUNDS VS INFINITIVES(1)
Shakespeare once asked, “to be or not to be?” This is exactly the question that we will be answering in today’s lesson. This lesson will teach you how to use verbs as nouns. A noun is typically the subject or object of a sentence. However, in this lesson, we will look at how we change verbs into verbal nouns called gerunds and infinitives; and how we can effectively use these two grammar tools.
I. GERUNDS
A gerund is a verb that ends in “-ing” that acts as a noun.
For example, we can take the base verb “walk” and add -ing to make “walking.”. Walking is our gerund.
If we make a sentence with this gerund, we can use walking as our subject.
Example: Walking always puts me in a good mood.
Note: Not every verb that ends in -ing is a gerund.
The progressive tenses use a be verb (am, is, are, etc.) + the present participle, which adds “-ing” to a base verb.
How do we know if it is a gerund or a present participle?
Gerunds always act as nouns or noun phrase, never as verbs
Examples:
|
Gerund |
Present participle |
|
Jenny enjoys walking. |
Jenny is walking right now. |
|
Walking is acting as the object of this sentence, what does Jenny enjoy? Walking |
What is Jenny doing? She is walking. Walking is acting as our verb. |
II. INFINITIVES
We also use infinitives to create verbal nouns. An infinitive is the simplest form of a verb. To make an infinitive, we place “to” in front of the verb. Infinitives are sometimes called “to infinitives”
Let’s take our verb “walk”. To create an infinitive, we add “to” and we now have to walk.
If we use the infinitive to walk in a sentence, it would look like this:
“She expected to walk right in”